The New AppleTV – The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

After a week with the new AppleTV, we can report it is the future of television – just not quite yet.

Every new platform comes with limitations, and the new Apple TV is no different, it’s just that some of the limitations are not what you’d expected.

The Good

The good news is, the basis is there to transform TV. The apps currently available, while limited, greatly expand the utility of what was until now just a limited video streaming box. No more – the new Apple TV as a gaming platform will grow enormously in the near future, just as the entire gaming industry was changed by the iPhone. Casual gaming is going to get a big boost in volume of sales, and the cost of “casual console” games will drop precipitously, and the biggest impact of this is going to be felt by one company – no, not Apple, but Nintendo. It would not be surprising at all if in two years time, Nintendo no longer made hardware, but merely published game titles. In other words, the Apple TV is going to make Nintendo into Atari.

Streaming is greatly enhanced by the addition of apps, which Apple is wisely not attempting to close off. Plex, the excellent media client/server has a freely available app, and in our opinion, it’s the best of the Plex apps available (Plex is also available for multiple platforms, from Roku and Android to PCs and many a NAS). The major networks have apps which allow you to watch full episodes of their shows, including shows you’ve missed going back months, depending upon the network. HBO and Showtime and Netflix are there. The Smithsonian and History Channels are there, and many others – and the list is only going to grow. The only thing missing is the ability to order all of your favorite cable channels all-a-carte, which Apple is apparently negotiating with the cable industry to provide.

A nice surprise is that the new Apple TV remote is incredibly good. It’s a very solid, quality piece of hardware, with the touchpad working far better than we expected it to in a handheld application. There is a “Siri button” built into it which allows you to use your voice to search both content apps and the app store itself, and it works amazingly well – better, it seems, than Siri on the iPhone works. That said, playing games on the remote is somewhat difficult, with, for example, the Amazon Fire TV remote working far better for even simple games like Crossyroad. The reality is, if gaming is your thing, you’re going to want a bluetooth gamepad, rather than the remote. Fortunately, there are some great choices available to choose from.

The Bad

For now, there’s one major streaming service that’s not available – Amazon. Amazon and Apple have never been best of friends, as evidenced by the fact Netflix was on the previous Apple TV and Amazon wasn’t, but the war has heated up. For reasons somewhat shrouded in mystery, Amazon recently made the decision to remove Apple TV and other streaming boxes that do not natively support Amazon Video from their store, citing “consumer confusion” as their reason. The really baffling part of all this is that now that apps are allowed on the new Apple TV, all Amazon needs to do is port their iPhone app to TvOS, and it would appear in the app store for the Apple TV. HBO did it, along with Showtime, ABC, NBC, CBS, and many others, but for some reason Amazon has not. Maybe there is something we don’t know that would explain why Amazon has taken the tack they have, but hopefully they reconsider and simply release their own app for the platform, considering it’s hurting Amazon and their customers far more than Apple.

The Ugly

The bluetooth stack on TvOS is inexplicably bad. Keyboards, to date, are not supported. We tried five different brands of bluetooth keyboards – all of which attach to iPhones and iPads AND the 3rd gen Apple TV without issue, mind you – and none of them were recognized by the new Apple Tv. Even Apple’s own bluetooth keyboard was not recognized. This is absolutely bewildering, given the fact the Apple TV uses most of the same internals as an iPhone. So, what could possibly explain this? We can think of only one good explanation – the new Apple TV uses a Qualcomm CSR1010 bluetooth 4.1 chipset – which the iPhones do not. This means it is possible that keyboard support is coming via a software update in the future, though far from certain. It is possible that Apple has decided allowing keyboards on the Apple TV would make it the new “affordable Mac” they don’t wish to sell, which it sort-of would, were an Office-compatible suite to be made available for the device. However, this would be a terrible mistake for Apple to make, creating a lot of ill-will among their users. We very much hope (and expect) bluetooth keyboards will be supported in the near future, and we consider it a major blunder for Apple to have released the device without full support.

To make matters much worse, the old Apple Remote app, which allowed you to use your iPhone or iPad as a keyboard for the old Apple TV, does not work with the new Apple Tv either. This means for every app that requires a login, you’ve got to enter your information via swipes on the physical remote. The good news is, you don’t have to do it all the time – the apps remember their logins after the initial connection is made, but that’s a lot of swiping on the remote to get everything setup and connected. The only plausible reason the remote app doesn’t work with the new Apple TV is that a new app is coming, but wasn’t ready at launch. It’s just mind-boggling that Apple allowed this to happen, particularly in conjunction with the lack of keyboard support. But wait – it gets better. Perhaps, you may be thinking to yourself, I can simply dictate into my keyboard using the remote, the same way I can on my iPhone! But…that would be a “No” – the Apple TV doesn’t support “dictated keyboard entry” at this time. It’s almost as if Apple was determined to frustrate their users at every turn with the release of this device.

The Verdict

Apple has always stated that they strive to design the best devices for their users, and they have done so again, right up until a login is required. Steve Jobs once famously described the Apple TV as a hobby. The good news is, at this point it’s not a hobby anymore; but it is something of a test – a biblical Jobsian plague sort of test. The question is, how much longer will Apple’s users have to suffer? and how it will end? A glass of ice-water would be nice, but lifting the curse would be best for all involved. Here’s hoping salvation is on the way.